


Insomnia

by bizuria



Category: Fablehaven Series - Brandon Mull
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:57:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7855255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bizuria/pseuds/bizuria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kendra can't sleep. Warren can't sleep. Nothing like the world's purest bromance to get someone through a lonely night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

> This is a super old fic that I wrote in the middle of the night last January and posted to my tumblr, but I decided just now to put it up, because I really really like it. So here we are.

It was four in the morning. I was awake. My mind was running circles in the dark. It’d been a year since Zzyzx, since everything. I still had nightmares. I still found myself awake at four in the morning, for no reason, except maybe that my body is still on edge a little. Still used to being scared about something more often than not. It’s fine, really. It is what it is.   
Eventually, though, I couldn’t stare at the ceiling any longer. I got up and wandered around the silent house. My feet tingled a little against the cold wood floors. I ended up sat in the living room, on the floor, and staring out into the yard. I watched the fairies drift around sleepily, until suddenly I was getting swooped up off the floor and into a pair of arms. I almost screamed.   
“We talked about this, Ken.” Warren said, “no moping after midnight without me.”  
“I’m not moping” I said. Warren just laughed. He didn’t believe me one bit. To be fair, I didn’t really believe me, either. And he was right. We had discovered our mutual tendency to be awake in the night, and had promised to find each other when it happened. It was easier, like that. Being alone can be nice, being alone in the middle of the night can be the loneliest thing in the world.   
“Listen, if you can’t take a pinky promise seriously, I’m not sure we can be friends” he said. I punched him in the arm.   
From there, it was sort of business as usual. I dug out the secret candy stash. Warren made hot chocolate and I sat on the counter, listening to him tell me about the dragon in his dream. I can tell it had been a pretty rough nightmare, but he talked excitedly about the dragon, as if talking about how cool it was would make the fear of the dream disappear. I suppose it did.   
We talked about nonsense all night. I teased him about Vanessa, and he teased me right back as I obsessed over some small thing Bracken had said last week. (“I mean, sure, the guy is big on subtext and taking it slow or whatever. But he knows it’s me he’s talking to, right? He could hit me with a four-by-four and I probably still wouldn’t get the message.”)  
The sky was turning pink with dawn by the time we stopped talking.   
…………………

When Grandpa trotted down the stairs the next morning, he smiled. It was neither the first time, nor the last, that he would come down to Warren and Kendra asleep on the floor, cuddling battleship games and candy wrappers.


End file.
